Yes, You Should Care About Ukraine

And not just for idealistic reasons, either.

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Before I dive into this newsletter, I don’t want anyone to misunderstand me. I do not support an American military response if Russia invades Ukraine, and I do not support making a military security guarantee to Ukraine outside of its potential future admission to NATO. I do believe the United States should take urgent action short of war to attempt to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the event of war, the United States should provide arms and other support to help Ukraine maintain as much of its territorial integrity and independence as possible. 

It’s important, however, to state why I believe America should attempt to aggressively deter Russia rather than merely sit back and meekly allow Putin to invade, dominate, and potentially annex significant parts of Ukrainian territory. And while part of that case is idealistic—rooted in concern for the human rights of Ukrainian citizens and their right to self-determination—part of it is also deeply pragmatic. It is bad for America if Ukraine falls.

An odd coalition of left-wing and right-wing American voices seems to disagree. On the right, Tucker Carlson has been particularly aggressive. In a series of segments on his top-rated cable news program, he has defended Russia’s interests in Ukraine, declared that NATO exists “primarily to torment Vladimir Putin,” and openly questioned why we’re not on “Russia’s side.”

In a recent monologue, Carlson repeated the themes of apologists for Russian and Soviet aggression for generations—Russia’s aggression is really defensive. “He just wants to keep his western borders secure.” 

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  1. David Hudelson

    I think that opposing NATO's entering militarily into Ukraine's defense doesn't require accepting Putin's claim that Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine. For centuries, Russia has had a visceral fear of the West and, in that context, a cordon around Ukraine to keep NATO at bay seems to me to make strategic sense from a Russian viewpoint. Plausibly, using back channels (thru Poland , Germany and Belarus, for instance) to relieve that angst makes sense. There could be a way to notify Russia that refraining from invasion will mean that NATO troops will not use Polish soil to enter Ukraine, but an invasion would remove all constraints.

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    Ben Connelly

    I know we’re not supposed to think this way but imagine if a popular cable talk show host had investments and business dealings in a certain Eurasian country and then made provocative statements on his show defending the idea that said country could invade its neighbors in the course of protecting its own “sovereignty.” Imagine if certain individuals associated with the government of said Eurasian country were perhaps friendly with said talk show host in a financial way, as well.

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  3. Gary

    Darn it David, once again I agree with most if not all you write in this post. Maybe someone smarter than I could but I find myself once again siding with the center right.

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  4. David Hudelson

    Russia for hundreds of years has been paranoid over potential invasion from the West and Poland's member ship in NATO and proximity to Ukraine (which until the advent of the United Nations was always deemed a part of Russia) keeps that paranoia alive. It seems quite possible to me that this paranoia explains why Putin might put a cordon around Ukraine, especially to close it off from ex-SSRs that now are NATO members. That premise suggests that a possible diplomatic strategy might be to induce Poland to assure both Belarus and Russia that unless Russia invades Ukraine, NATO troops won't be allowed to use Polish territory to access Ukraine; this holds in reserve options to do so if Russia does invade. Why not incentivize restraint and downplay threats to retaliate militarily? Preparations to retaliate, of course, should continue.

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  5. Tim Richardson

    A nasty ground war in Ukraine and a China blitz into Taiwan would be a terrible one-two punch to us and the EU and all democracies worldwide. We may not be able to avoid another world war, especially if China props up Russia economically. If all this goes down, we might need to send Ja Morant overseas . . .

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  6. Kurt Von Fuchs

    Another great article. I would be very very careful about comparing Russia and China and saying the actions of one will lead to the actions by the other.

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    JDNavigator

    David’s arguments are all on target. While the rights and interests of Ukrainian citizens should be an immediate concern, the longer term implications go far beyond those important considerations. Putin seeks to reestablish Soviet-era satellite states with authoritarian leaders subservient to Russian interests. He has just demonstrated his willingness to use military force to prop us a pro-Russian autocrat in Kazakhstan. If we fail to stop him, including the risky but necessary threat of credible NATO military force, he will use the same strategy against the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states. It will be much more costly to prevent those moves.

    In 1936, Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland in direct violation of the Versailles Treaty. France had the biggest army in the world, Britain controlled the seas, but their peoples were still in shock from the Great War and large majorities favored appeasement. Hitler told his generals that if France or England opposed his brazen move, they were to pull back. Nothing was done. If the Western powers had been willing to intervene militarily then, and later in Austria and the Sudetenland, the conflagration of the Second World War might have been avoided. The Ukrainian crisis differs in important ways, but I agree with Mark Twain: history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

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  8. RoniH

    So, the best defense is a sound offense. If Russia decides to come across the border with Ukraine, what can we do about that? The most obvious thing is to figure out how to support a Ukranian Resistance movement. But that's merely defensive and bound to fail, since I don't think that we can actually do that for too terribly long given our "free and open" society, especially the media.

    And we don't want to go toe-to-toe with Russia, although I think sinking the Black Sea fleet would go a long way towards making Russia think twice about further adventurism. We can surely defeat Russia on the High Seas, and their supply lines and lines of communications are no shorter than our own. We can also probably defeat their air force should they decide to come after us in Alaska or in the area of Japan.

    Even if we don't want to go toe-to-toe with the Russians, the question is how do we harm Russia in a meaningful way? Sanctions? Is that the only tool we've got in our belt?

    What something really evil, like flooding their computing infrastructure with American launched "ransomware"? Or figuring out how to project VoA into the Russian airwaves? Or figuring out how to collapse their will to fight (which would likely happen if we could keep them bogged down in Ukraine and send enough "soldati" back in bags.)? Or even how to undermine their political system with Fake News?

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    Ted Lehmann

    I think its interesting that the neither the words "communism" nor "socialism" that dominated international politics for most of the last century or more were mentioned in David's column. Do you suppose they never were the actual risks they were posited to be, but simply another way to play the game of international power? Yet don't we hear them in our internal political struggles between so-called left and right today?

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      Ed P

      Thankfully, the sort of Marxist revolutionary form of communism was soundly defeated in the 20th century the same way Hitler’s form of explicit fascism was. Too obviously toxic for anyone to gain power by those means these days.


      Todays Autocrats and tyrants have found new means to con the masses into power, new window dressing.

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  10. Sarah

    This was really helpful for me! Great high-level overview of the stakes.

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